Egyptian vigilantes beat two men accused of stealing a motorized rickshaw on Sunday and then hung them by their feet while some in a watching crowd chanted “kill them!” Both men died, security officials said.

The killings come a week after the attorney general’s office encouraged civilians to arrest lawbreakers and hand them over to police. They are emblematic of the chaos sweeping Egypt and a security breakdown of frightening proportions.

It was one of the most extreme cases of vigilantism in two years of sharply deteriorating security following the 2011 uprising. Gruesome photos circulated quickly on Facebook and other social media outlets, showing images taken by people in the crowd of thousands who watched and recorded the lynchings on cellphone cameras.

The killings were in the town of Samanod, about 55 miles north of Cairo in the Nile Delta province of Gharbiya.

Mamdouh al-Muneer, spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood group in the Gharbiya governorate, told The Associated Press that the lynchings followed a spate of rapes in the area. He said there have been a number of incidents in the past several months of girls being abducted while leaving school.

“Unfortunately, the police are completely out of the picture in Gharbiya. They are not comfortable with their position, with the president or with their role after the uprising,” he said.

The Brotherhood is the country’s dominant political group.

Egypt is currently mired in another wave of protests, clashes and unrest that have plagued the country since the ouster of authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak in the pro-democracy uprising two years ago.

This wave of unrest has also engulfed the nation’s police force. Thousands of officers and low-ranking policemen have broken ranks, staging protests and waging strikes against what they say is the politicization of the force by President Mohammed Morsi, who came from the Muslim Brotherhood, and his interior minister.

The state-run newspaper Ahram reported on its website that the events in Samanod began when the two men were dragged in the street after being caught “red-handed” trying to steal a motorized rickshaw. Witnesses said they were also accused of kidnapping a girl inside the rickshaw, but that she escaped unharmed.

A witness said they were beaten but still alive before they were strung up from the rafters of an open-air bus station. Both were stripped down to their underwear.

Photographs from the scene show one of the bodies hanging with deep, bloody lacerations covering his back. From the front, one of the men’s face is completely covered in blood. Other shots showed both hanging by their feet, bruised, cut and bleeding.

A photographer who witnessed the scene told the AP that some in the crowd threatened to kill him if he took pictures of the lynchings with his professional camera.

He said that women and children were in the crowd of about 3,000 watching the lynchings, some from their balconies overlooking the scene, and some chanted in support “kill them!”

Afterward, residents took their bodies and dumped them on the doorstep of a nearby police station, according to witnesses.